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The Holocaust in American Life
by
Peter Novick
Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long -- how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish l...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
September 20th 2000
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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How did the Holocaust move from being a topic rarely discussed in the decades after World War II to being a moral touchstone in American discourse nearly five decades later? Who profits from the Holocaust remembrance industry, either politically or financially? What are the powerful motivations behind collective memory and narrative?
Peter Novick, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, examines how a variety of events have moved Holocaust consciousness to the cente...more
I'm trying to be more conservative in how I rate books so that I only give a five to ones that are amazing.
To put it simply:
I was born to read this book.
Am I being dramatic? A tiny bit. But it was like sitting in a college class taught by an amazing professor where every word out of his mouth is fascinating.
And pretty much only I would feel this way about the book.
He talks about how the Holocaust has evolved in America from when no one talked a...more
To put it simply:
I was born to read this book.
Am I being dramatic? A tiny bit. But it was like sitting in a college class taught by an amazing professor where every word out of his mouth is fascinating.
And pretty much only I would feel this way about the book.
He talks about how the Holocaust has evolved in America from when no one talked a...more
This is a well-written and well-researched book on the reception of the Holocaust as a culrural and political object in America. I'm glad Novick and not I wrote this book, because I could never be so genial about the issue, or the deep corruption with which it is manipulated by professional Jews in general and Zionists and neocons in particular.
American Jews are diverse and in their majority secular and assimilationist. Religion divides them rather than unites them. Holocaust talk i...more
American Jews are diverse and in their majority secular and assimilationist. Religion divides them rather than unites them. Holocaust talk i...more
Novick's polemic may be infuriating, and wrong, but he raises the right questions. He presses the debate that has roiled, for the past 60 years, over what it means to be a Jew, and an American.
An extremely interesting (and controversial) look into the development of the Holocaust as a central point of importance to the American Jewish community.
hard to read...will make you angry...but it's very good
Interesting if riling account of how America "claimed" the Holocaust for itself, and when it became Holocaust with a capital "H".
I agree with almost every point this author makes, despite his incredulity that anyone would.
Useful, but not good history.
During World War II, neither Americans in general nor American Jews in particular singled out the Nazi murders of the Jews among all crimes of the Nazis, and in fact were disinclined to believe their extent. Sure, the Soviets told the world about the Nazi murders of Soviet Jews, but the Soviets seemed to have lied about the Katyn forest massacre, so why believe them in this case? Soon after the war the murders did not enter the American popular consciousness, not least because the concentration ...more
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